


A River Leads You Home

by aeli_kindara



Series: Supernatural Codas [11]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Castiel (Supernatural)'s Handprint, Episode: s14e03 The Scar, Getting Together, Humor, I mean like some spectacularly failed soup, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker, Season/Series 14, Team Free Will 2.0, Trauma, one (1) family, soup failure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 01:47:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16466366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara
Summary: In which Dean and Cas reunite, and there's more than one scar.





	A River Leads You Home

**Author's Note:**

> ...apparently I'm allergic to writing S14 codas of under 10,000 words.

### I. 

The ride back from Duluth is eleven hours, and Dean drives the last five of them.

He can hear Sam on the phone, at the first gas stop. He’s turned away from the car, hand on the pump, phone to his ear. _Yeah, Cas, it’s really him, we tested everything —_ Dean glances down at his palm, parallel thin slices, angel blade and silver — _I don’t know, he says Michael just left. I don’t know._

Dean raises his hand to look more closely. The gas station lights are white, overbright, reflecting off the raindrops on the window — more than adequate to illuminate the cuts. They’re puffed pink, slightly, already starting to heal. He presses his thumb against them, and they hurt — a simple, human sort of hurt.

He glances out the Impala’s rain-spattered glass, and sees Sam’s eyes on him, and drops his hand.

“Yeah,” says Sam, into his phone, “I think we’ll stop for a motel somewhere when —” He huffs out a breath of a laugh, dropping his head. “Yeah, Cas, I’m fine. We’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

The door creaks when Sam opens it. Dean drops his head back onto the folded-up overcoat that’s serving him as a pillow, turns his face toward the window. The wool is expensive; it doesn’t feel scratchy against his cheek. He keeps thinking it should smell like Michael, like — something. It doesn’t smell like anything. It doesn’t smell like Dean.

He can feel Sam looking at him. He doesn’t move. After a moment, Sam turns the key in Baby’s ignition, and she rumbles to life. She sends a purr up through Dean’s seat, through his ribs.

The eastern sky is beginning to smudge the vaguest of grays. Sam steers them through the dappled orange and white circles of the streetlights and up the ramp, back onto I-35.

\---

In Des Moines, Sam pulls into a truck stop diner, knocks his hand briefly against Dean’s shoulder. “Hey,” he says, “let’s get some food in you.”

It’s an all night kind of place, bright lights and steaming coffee, the third shift waitress looking like she’s more than ready to call it a day. “Coffee,” Dean tells her, a little surprised by the sound of his own voice, and then, because Sam’s looking at him, “and, uh, two eggs over easy, rye toast.”

“Hash browns ok?” she asks, and he nods, fingers the chipped white handle of the mug she sets in front of him. The surface of the coffee is black and smooth, a wisp of steam curling up from it. Dean waves away the sugar and creamer, closes his eyes, and takes a sip.

It’s not good coffee. He knows that. It’s been sitting on the hot plate too long, stale and flat-tasting, but the sensation of it is still shocking. Hot on his tongue, aroma filling his nose; he feels like he can sense the caffeine bursting into his bloodstream, can feel his heart speed up.

He tries not to think about his heart. It hasn’t felt quite — normal — since Michael left. Dean isn’t sure if it’s beating too fast, or not enough, or if he’s just not used to being able to feel it at all.

Sam drinks his coffee, too, watching him. His eyelids are pink with exhaustion. The beard on his cheeks makes him look somehow haggard and healthy at once.

“How long’s it been?” Dean asks, suddenly terrified of the answer. He thinks — remembers — weeks. But if he’s got it wrong — if he’s been drowning under Michael’s weight for months, for _years_ —

The trucker at the next table shakes open a newspaper. Dean sees the headline on it at the same moment Sam opens his mouth to answer — _Halloween preparations underway._ “A few weeks,” Sam says.

Dean nods, a crushing gratitude clenching in his chest, abruptly unable to answer.

When his food comes, he finds that he can only manage a few bites. It’s not that it’s unappealing — the opposite. The toast is buttery and delicious, just the right amount of crunch. It’s the kind with little caraway seeds sprinkled through, and each one detonates on Dean’s tongue, a surprising burst of flavor. Each bite of egg feels like pure fuel — vital, life-giving, enormous. Dean’s stomach clenches. He pushes the plate away.

Sam’s eyebrows draw together. “Dean, are you —”

“All good, Sammy.” Dean meets his brother’s eyes, and feels his lips quirk. “Just hard to work up much of an appetite with _that_ staring back at me,” he adds, and gestures comprehensively at The Beard.

For a moment, Sam just looks taken aback. Then he laughs, throwing his head back, letting his fork drop to rest on the table. When he looks at Dean again, he’s still shaking his head, still smiling with his eyes. “Listen,” he says, “I’m beat. I was thinking we could grab a room and crash for a few hours, hit the road again once we’re rested up?”

Lying still behind the curtains of a darkened room, only Sam’s sleep-softened breathing for company. An abrupt, blank terror seizes at Dean’s chest. “I’m not that tired,” he says. “I can drive.”

Sam looks skeptical.

“Seriously, Sammy.” He throws all his bluster into the words. “I’m good. Guess I’ve been sleeping for a few weeks now; I’m all caught up.”

The dubious expression stays on Sam’s face. Dean meets his gaze and tries to look — responsible. Competent. Of good judgment and sound moral character. Un-haunted by his stint as Michael’s meatsuit.

_His stint as Michael’s meatsuit._ Every cell of his body feels dirty.

Sam yawns hugely. “All right,” he says, through it, “if you don’t mind me catching a couple hours in shotgun —”

“Course not,” says Dean, too grateful to come up with a joke to give his brother shit.

Sam yawns again, and fumbles in his pocket for cash. Dean excuses himself for the bathroom. He doesn’t need to pee, not really. He does think he might need to throw up.

He doesn’t, though. Waits there in the stall for a couple minutes just in case, but his roiling stomach calms instead. He lets himself out again, and catches a look at his reflection in the mirror.

The crisp part Michael put in his hair is mussed by his hours in the car, pretending to try to sleep. The tie is gone — he pulled it from his neck as soon as he slid into the Impala’s front seat, left it crumpled on the floor under his shoes. He’s still wearing the vest, though. His arms are still hidden under the long white sleeves of his — Michael’s — shirt.

He wrenches at them suddenly, furiously, vest and shirt alike, pulling them loose from his pants. His fingers are frantic on the buttons. He’s still drowning, still bound up tight in this — this —

He stops.

What is he going to do, strip naked in a diner bathroom in Des Moines? He doesn’t have any other clothes in Baby; he already checked. Even if he did —

Dean could scratch his fucking _skin_ off and still not be free of Michael’s taint.

He can’t bear to do the buttons up again; he can’t bear to strip down to the undershirt, foreign and white against his skin. He leaves his shirt tails hanging loose as he returns to the car.

Sam’s already half-dozing in the passenger seat, already making a vague bleary noise of response when Dean slides behind the wheel. He pulls her around to a pump, gets out to pop the gas cap, and pauses in humiliation when he realizes he doesn’t have any money.

No cards, no wallet, no phone. No IDs. When he opens the Impala’s door again, Sam’s snoring. Dean tries not to knock the glovebox against his knees when he opens it. He finds a spare FBI badge inside, and a burner phone, but no credit cards.

“Sam,” he hisses. “Hey, Sam.” He shakes his brother’s knee.

Sam lurches awake. “Hey,” says Dean again, hoping his face isn’t as obviously red as it feels, “need to borrow your card.”

It takes Sam a moment to understand. Then he offers his wallet, uncomplaining, and Dean takes it, and the whole thing is done.

That doesn’t explain why it keeps on smarting all the way back to the bunker.

\---

Being behind Baby’s wheel again is good, though. She’s done well, under Sam’s care. He’s probably being vain to imagine she’s glad to see him, but it feels that way anyway. At least Michael never got his hands on her.

By the time they pull into the bunker garage, he’s allowing himself to fantasize about a hot shower. About scrounging something up in the kitchen; about sleeping in his own bed. His own clothes. About Cas, eyes liquid with gratitude, saying _Dean_ in a voice that grates low and relieved; crossing the library, pulling him into a tight, unguarded hug.

Cas was there, when he said yes; there wasn’t time for much more. Dean will tell him he’s sorry. He’ll tell him he came back.

Sam blinks awake looking scruffy and beleaguered, and Dean’s in a good enough mood, this time, to rib him properly on the beard. It feels strange, to be walking back into the bunker from a long trip without a bag on his shoulder, but he covers it with a joke about Duck Dynasty. He feels strangely naked under Michael’s layers of shirts.

Sam laughs like he’s happy, though, and defends the monstrosity on his face, and reaches for Dean’s shoulder, again, when he turns toward the war room. “Hey, hey,” he says, “you, uh —” and the bubble of warm anticipation in Dean’s chest feels substantial enough that he cuts his brother off. “Hey, if you’re gonna ask if I’m okay,” he says, “you don’t have to.”

It’s not quite a _yes._ Not quite. But it’s close enough. “I’m good,” he adds, as he leads the way down the corridor, and he means it; if he’s not entirely truthful about the missing time, it’s not like he _remembers_ it, exactly, either. “Just really, really happy to be —”

He stops dead on the war room steps.

The bunker is bustling with activity. Hunters, from their world and the other one alike; a couple faces he recognizes from around town. He knows a few of the names. Not all. They all seem to be occupied with various tasks, full of purpose. None of them are looking at him.

“— home,” finishes Dean, off-balance.

One of the new guys is the first to notice him. He looks, for a moment, like he’d like to stab Dean through the throat.

The second is Jack.

He’s wearing an oversized t-shirt and a general look of forlorn earnestness, and his face lights up when he sees Dean. He must have known they were coming, but he still says Dean’s name like it’s some kind of a holy thing, still moves toward him without dropping his eyes from Dean’s face.

He looks like he could be Cas’s kid. Flesh and blood.

An unexpected knot of emotion tangles in Dean’s throat. “Is it really you?” breathes Jack, and he can barely do more than nod, and then Cas is there — Cas is hurrying down the steps, with the belt of his trenchcoat dangling haphazard behind him and his face scribed with lines of worry, and Dean doesn’t know what to fucking say.

He raises his eyebrows like he’s about to make some dumb comment, but it fails him, and he just breathes out instead, helpless. Jack saves him by stepping forward into a cautious hug, and by the time he’s done, there’s a smile breaking across Cas’s face, creased and stupid and perfect, and he’s saying, “Dean,” but it’s more warm than it is gravel, and Dean manages a “Cas” that’s only a little choked.

He’s home. Cas told him to be, when they said goodbye in this room, on these steps — both of them more than half-crazy with fear and grief — and he is. He’s home.

He’s home and he’s wearing the badges of his failure. He’s home and a cartoon of a disheveled archangel, which might look good when Cas does it, but abruptly Dean’s skin is crawling again. Abruptly he can’t be in this room, among these people, not like this; abruptly he needs to be _clean._

“Still okay. I promise,” he manages for Sam, and — something for Cas, and Jack, a gesture, a nod. He hopes it’s reassuring. He’s not sure why the tides of his own mood have turned so fast, and so vicious. He nearly stumbles over Michael’s shoes on the way to his room.

 

### II.

It looks the way he left it. More books on his shelf than ever; fewer weapons on the wall. It looks like the room of a guy who _lives_ there. Who isn’t terrified it might all be ripped away.

For a blinding moment, Dean hates it with everything he has.

He shrugs the vest off, and grits his teeth when it pollutes his bedroom floor. The shirt is harder, clinging closer, and he yanks it free of his wrists. He should rip it in half. He should burn it. He drops it on top of the vest like toxic waste.

When he catches his own eye in the mirror, for an instant, Dean expects to see Michael staring back at him.

It’s just him. Just his own miserable, screwed-up face, his own weakness, and a brand-new scar, barely peeking out from the sleeve of Michael’s t-shirt.

He pushes it up with dread building in his veins. He’s been here before; he’s found an angel’s mark on him before. That time was one thing. This —

But it’s not a handprint. It’s just two marks, symmetrical, rough and blistered with healing; they’re pointed at either end. They look too regular to be the mark of a single finger, or Michael’s thumb.

He wrenches the sleeve farther up, to be sure — nothing. He undresses with shaking hands, frantic, wants to curl up and hide as he strips himself bare. He doesn’t. He cranes his neck to examine himself in the small mirror, every inch of his body. Runs his hands over his skin in search of small irregularities. Places his memories might betray him.

There’s nothing. Only the double mark on his right shoulder.

That, and the handprint on his left.

He stares at it for a full minute before he touches it with trembling fingers. Some part of him expects it to be hot, burning; it isn’t. But muscle memory doesn’t fail him. His fingers still know every inch of it, the way it dips over his deltoid, the place the pad of one fingerprint nearly brushes his collarbone. The angle of the palm and the shape of the gap at its heart. The ridges and lines.

He knows whose it is.

Dean doesn’t remember the flight from Hell. Not really. Not as more than sensations — his own thrashing attempts to fight, a grip searing into his flesh. Heat. Blood. Air running out, rough pine against his palms.

And again, mere weeks ago — Cas’s hand on his shoulder. Cas’s crumpled face; Cas’s fingers so tight they seemed to burn. Maybe they did. Maybe that’s —

Cas’s voice, wrung out. _Dean, please — come home._

Dean sinks, ass-naked, onto the edge of his bed. He stays there for a long time, staring at the wall, before he finally collects himself enough to find his robe and venture down the quiet corridor to the bathroom.

\---

Because Dean Winchester is a coward, he waits until the distant murmur of voices from the war room has dwindled to nothing before he finally makes his reappearance.

He dresses himself in dark layers, familiar jeans. They feel like a fiction. He shoulders out of his shirt half a dozen times to look at one scar, then the other, then pulls the collar tight again, feeling strangely guilty. He watches the door as if Cas or Sam might come knock on it at any moment, checking up on him, or even Jack. No one does.

Finally, when ten o’clock has come and gone and nothing’s happening and he has no more excuses, he rises abruptly and wrenches his own door open, strides down the corridor with the bang of it echoing loudly behind him.

They’re in the library — just the two of them, Sam and Cas. Otherwise, it’s empty. Dean stops dead at the threshold, and tries to keep his shoulders from rising in preemptive defense. He looks straight at Cas, ignoring his brother, ignoring the rushing in his ears.

“Cas,” he says, “I need your help.”

Cas moves toward him slowly. “Anything, Dean.”

Dean steels himself. “I need you to read my mind.”

\---

He doesn’t know if he wants Cas to see the other mark.

He keeps it hidden, shrugs his shirt off at the right shoulder and pulls up the sleeve beneath to reveal the new scar. Maybe Cas already knows about the handprint. Maybe he put it there on purpose. Maybe he’s being polite, not mentioning it; or maybe he’ll sense it the moment he touches Dean’s skin, drop his hand to that shoulder, see through him, all the way to the bottom of his shame.

Sam doesn’t like it. Cas doesn’t either. That makes Dean’s skin hot with an anger he knows is really at himself. “I can handle it,” he says, cutting them both off. “Cas — come on. Hit me.”

His hands are going to tremble if he doesn’t clench them into fists. He drums them against the tabletop, blinks hard as Cas moves close.

Suddenly, he wants to run the fuck away.

There’s no time to entertain that notion. Dean doesn’t want to anyway. Michael — he should focus on Michael —

Cas’s fingers brush momentarily through his hair before they settle, hesitant. His fingertips are light on Dean’s scalp.

Dean screws his eyes shut.

He wants it to hurt. He wants it to fucking burn through him, to clean him out; wants to feel punished. Purged. He wants Cas to _see_ him, to punch a hand through his rib cage and grip his fucking soul — to witness all the weakness and the terror there, to set fire to anything of Michael that remains. To still be looking at him like this, on the other side. To still think Dean is some kind of precious thing.

It’s none of that. It’s more like a shitty heart attack of a headache, seizing up inside his skull, and he’s seeing what Cas sees — monsters, one-sided fights. Michael in utter control. He flinches less from pain than from self-hatred, and feels Cas’s hand drop, brush his neck.

_Jesus Christ, like you mean it,_ he wants to say, but he can’t find the breath, or the words. Sam’s voice sounds strangely distorted and faraway — “Anything?”

Cas is shifting slightly. Not answering. But then his hand drops down to Dean’s exposed skin and closes, hard, over the scar.

He touches it like he hates it as much as Dean does. He touches it like he’d erase it if he could.

And the pain spears through Dean’s shoulder like a fresh wound.

The images are different, this time, but he can see it, flickering and foreign — something he recognizes. Something that could do this to fucking _Michael._

When he opens his eyes, the anxiety is gone. The fluttering neediness inside his sternum; the resentment, the pity, the self-loathing.

When he opens his eyes, he knows there’s a thing that can hurt Michael, and he’s not gonna stop until he finds it, and kills him dead.

 

### III.

Dean lets himself pretend, with Jody, like he kicked Michael out himself, and Sam lets it slide.

He recognizes the vampires. From somewhere underwater; he knows their faces. Michael never bothered to learn their names.

He knows it’s Kaia, too, on some level deeper than thought. He knows it’s — complicated. He knows he won’t let that stop him; knows he won’t blink from anything. Whatever he needs to do. To get this done — to get the thing that’ll kill Michael, firmly in his right hand.

He fails.

“Dean Winchester, you have nothing to apologize for,” Jody says later, even though they all know it’s a lie.

 

### IV.

Dean feels wrung out, on the second drive home; seen-through. He welcomes it, in a way. “I put us all in danger today. Stupid danger,” he tells Sam, and Sam sighs, but doesn’t tell him he’s wrong.

“Y’know,” Dean says, “I said yes to him because I thought —”

_Because I thought I could fight him off, if it came to that. Because I thought I could win._

Sam runs into the gas station in Yankton for junk food, and comes out with a pile of Dean’s favorites. He offers them silently, and Dean waves him off. Sam watches him for a moment, then sighs.

“Dean,” he says, carefully, “you’ve been back for two days. You haven’t eaten or — as far as I can tell — _slept._ You haven’t even been tired. I know we tested you, but if there’s still some grace floating around inside you, it might —”

Dean can’t help himself; he laughs. It cuts Sam off short.

“Sammy,” he says, “trust me. I’m fucking exhausted.” His stomach clenches painfully when he glances at the pile of food. He looks up to meet Sam’s eyes. “You gotta let me — work it out my own way,” he finishes, more quietly. “I’ll get there.”

Sam hesitates, then nods, eyes tight. “If you want me to drive —”

“I’m good,” says Dean, and he is.

Sam passes out again within five minutes — hypocrite — and Dean drives in silence, reaching after a while for the dial to turn a Bob Seger tape on low. He tries not to think about drowning.

It never felt like that before. Not with the Mark of Cain, not with Amara; not when he took up that knife down in the Pit. It was always just — calm.

He tried to find that, with Michael. Once or twice, in his weakest moments. Tried to just — drift, and give up, only for a moment. A panic had spasmed inside him instead, a desperate need for air, and he’d fought and fought harder, for nothing. Always for nothing.

His ribs feel like they’re fused to iron plates. Inflating his lungs is Herculean. He sucks air in, as deep as it will go, expanding his chest. Panic tightens in his cells; there’s no oxygen. He can cram his chest as full of air as he wants, and he still won’t be able to breathe.

No. No. The air is fine; he’s fine. He just needs to take another breath. Another. At his right, Sam sleeps on.

He remembers, suddenly, a night in a motel, a long fucking time ago.

Lying still behind the curtains of a darkened room, only Sam’s sleep-softened breathing for company. Only Sam wasn’t breathing softly, not that time — Sam was screaming, wailing, beating his fists against the bars of his crib. Dean remembers curling into the tightest ball he could, up at the top of his enormous, adult-sized motel bed; remembers crumpling fistfuls of duvet against his ears, yelling, _Shut up — just shut up!_ over the sound of his baby brother’s howls.

He remembers feeling like he couldn’t breathe. Like he couldn’t think. He remembers wishing, with every furious fiber of his tiny soul, for Dad to come in; for Dad to finish his phone call, out in the parking lot, and _come in,_ and fix it. He remembers not letting himself wish for Mom.

In the end, he’d thrown off the covers, suddenly too heavy. Dragged the room’s single chair across the floor to Sammy’s crib, climbed up onto it in bare feet — the screaming still wouldn’t stop. He remembers feeling the chair tip under him, and nearly losing his balance; clinging with bare toes to the pilled upholstery, digging the wooden arms into his shins.

He’d lifted Sammy out of his crib, that night. He was already heavy, almost too heavy, and awkward, but Dean got him against his chest and sat down abruptly on the unsteady chair, slipped til his feet hit the floor. Sam had struck him with his fists, a few times, snorted furious gobs of snot and saliva into Dean’s pajamas, but he’d quieted, after a while. Lain there mouthing at the wet spot on Dean’s shirt and snuffling, softly, and Dean had slid himself back up the bed and held his brother to his chest and breathed, and breathed, and breathed.

Dean clenches his fingers on the steering wheel. He thinks of Jack’s careful arms around him, slight weight against his chest. He thinks of Cas’s smile. He drives on.

\---

It’s past midnight when they get home, and the bunker is empty. Sam stumbles off to bed with some sounds that might be syllables but don’t quite add up to words, and Dean eyes his own door briefly with a longing that’s more than half dread. He continues down the corridor instead, toward the light that’s on in the kitchen.

Cas is standing over a large pot on the stove. He looks flustered, hair sticking up in every direction; he’s not sweaty, because angels don’t sweat, but he would be if they did. His sleeves are rolled up to the elbows. As Dean watches, he dips a ladle into the pot, frowns at its contents, and sips without blowing to cool it.

He only swallows a very small amount. His face remains extremely blank.

“What is that?” Dean asks, stepping through the doorway. Cas glances up at him, and empties the rest of the ladle. It’s an off-green color; it gloops, unappealingly. The smell reaches Dean’s nose, and he wrinkles it. “Some kind of spell?”

Cas sighs. “Soup,” he says, gloomily, “or an attempt at it. Jack has a cold.” He stares into its murky depths, than looks up at Dean. “Would you try it? It doesn’t taste very good to me, but since all I’m getting is molecules —”

Dean approaches with some trepidation. The pot looks more like a toxic waste dump than it does like food. He can see vague objects swimming in its depths, and hopes they’re vegetables.

Cas offers him the ladle. He takes a wary scoop of what he hopes is mostly broth, and raises it to his nose, and sniffs.

It doesn’t smell — as bad, from here. It smells like everything in it might at least be food.

Dean takes a cautious sip, and promptly spews the contents of his mouth back into the pot, just as it releases an enormous, foul-smelling bubble.

“Salt,” he croaks, “how much salt did you _put_ in there?”

Cas lurches out of the way as Dean flails for the sink, nearly knocking a glass onto the floor in his hurry to pour water down his throat. He swallows desperately, eyes falling on a list of ingredients on the counter, in a pile with Cas’s phone and the other odd contents of his pockets, and he nearly chokes. “Cas, did you just try to feed me _sheep’s eyes?”_

“What? No, that’s for a spell. Dean, I —” Cas steps forward as if to retrieve the objects, shaking his head, then stops. “I _tried_ to follow a recipe. It said salt to taste, but I couldn’t really taste it, so I kept adding more.”

Dean fills another glass of water. “That,” he says, around another gulp, “does not explain the texture.”

Cas’s shoulders are hunched miserably. “I tried to make it cook faster. The recipe said eight hours, but I thought I could speed it up with my grace. Only then it didn’t look right, so I decided to leave it on for eight hours anyway.”

“Eight hours? Let me see that.” He takes Cas’s phone, and scrolls down the screen. Abruptly, he starts to laugh.

Cas is staring at him. He looks kind of wounded. Dean can’t help himself; now that it’s coming, he can’t stop it. He doubles over, nearly spilling his water, and bends to set it on the floor; then he’s sinking to the floor himself, back to the cabinet doors, ribs shaking. There are tears of mirth on his cheeks. He gasps for words. “Cas,” he manages, “that’s a slow-cooker recipe,” and dissolves again into helpless giggles.

Cas only manages his poker face for a moment longer. A smile cracks it, and he sinks to the floor beside Dean, moving his water glass to safety. “I thought it was something I could do,” he admits, ruefully. “Jack solved the case. If he hadn’t been there — talked to the girl, figured out what was really happening to her — I’d have done all the things I was supposed to do, and I’d have let her die.”

Dean tips his head back against the lip of the counter. “I thought I could fight Michael off,” he offers in answer, and it doesn’t feel all that terrible, admitting it to Cas.

“Dean,” says Cas, warm. Suddenly, Dean can feel the handprint on his left shoulder, again; it tingles with Cas’s proximity. “Michael is an archangel. He’s stronger than any of us could have imagined.”

“Sam fought Lucifer. You fought Lucifer.” It doesn’t sting as badly as it did; they’re just facts.

“For an instant. And only when we each came face to face with someone we loved as a brother, and Lucifer threatened their lives.”

Dean’s chest tightens. He glances over Cas’s face. He doesn’t ask, _Do you love me as a brother?_

“Hey,” he says instead. “I’ll teach you to make chicken noodle soup. For Jack. If you want.”

Cas stares at him for a long moment. Almost like he heard Dean’s unspoken question. Almost like he heard the question under it.

“I’d like that,” he says, gravely, and stands, and offers a hand to help Dean to his feet.

\---

They empty the soup pot into the sink. It leaves a large, green, gelatinous-looking blob, quivering over the drain. Dean pokes it in horrified fascination, and it ripples. He thinks he can see a whole eggplant inside.

“It’s like frogspawn,” he says, fascinated. “It’s _mutated._ Do you think it’s alive?”

Cas makes an urgent, embarrassed noise in his throat, pressing his shoulder against Dean’s. “I thought you were going to show me how to do it right, not mock my failure.”

“Right, yeah,” says Dean, still staring, and Cas turns on the faucet, and the mystery substance begins to slowly dissolve down the drain.

“If our pipes get clogged,” Dean says, “you’re cleaning them,” and then he relents and goes to find out what they have in the fridge.

It’s in better shape than he thought. It seems like most of the hunters aren’t actually _living_ here in the bunker — just using it as a home base for operations. One whole side of the fridge seems to be devoted to labeled lunches and other supplies, but the right side is still his; still has half the ingredients he left in here, the longer-lived ones, and a few that should probably be thrown out.

They have everything they’re going to need. Dean takes Cas through the process, step by step, and watches him taste the broth carefully, frowning as he calibrates his molecular detection software or whatever.

“We’ve gotta get you some way of actually tasting food,” Dean tells him. When Cas looks up at him, he grins. “My cooking’s too good to miss out on.”

Cas doesn’t rise to the bait, though, just gives him a searching look. “Dean,” he says, “have you eaten yet? Since you’ve been back?”

Dean flushes, for no good reason. “A little,” he hedges, because it’s true, but Cas goes back to solemnly stirring the pot, and doesn’t give him any shit for it.

When they go to bring Jack his soup, he’s fast asleep.

Cas knocks lightly and creaks the door open, but it’s dark inside, and Jack’s curled up with his back to them. “He still doesn’t sleep much, usually,” Cas murmurs, hesitating for a moment at the line between the light from the hall and the dim calm of Jack’s room. “It must be because he’s not feeling well.”

He’s still holding the bowl of soup cupped in both his hands like an offering. “It’ll still be good when he wakes up,” Dean offers. “We can heat it up again.”

“That seems like it would be best. Sleep is important for healing,” Cas agrees, and turns, and lets Dean shut the door quietly behind them.

Back in the kitchen, he pauses in the middle of the room, still carrying the soup. He looks up to meet Dean’s eyes, face serious. “If you wanted,” he says, “I understand that chicken soup is a good reintroduction to solid food. For delicate stomachs.”

_I’m not delicate,_ Dean wants to protest, but what comes out of his mouth is, “Yeah, okay.”

He lowers himself into a seat at the kitchen table. Cas places the bowl in front of him.

Dean eats it. Then he eats three more.

 

### V.

In bed, exhaustion burns at Dean’s eyes, forms a knot of uncomfortable pain in his throat. He wills himself to drift off, squeezes his eyes shut like that’ll help; his right hand drifts up to his left shoulder, slips inside the sleeve of his t-shirt to trace the hand-shaped mark.

It feels like it’s faded, a little, since he first noticed it. The ridges feel gentler, the skin more smooth.

Frowning, he uses his other hand to check the one on his right. It stands out just as rough and raised as ever. He lies there thinking, for a moment, with both arms crossed to the opposite shoulder, like he’s hugging himself. Suddenly, the weight of them on his chest is too much — he can’t breathe. Dean sits up, fast, and stares into the darkness.

He sucks in deep lungfuls of air until his heart rate returns to something like normal. Then he lies back down to try again.

He can’t stop reaching for his shoulder, though. Can’t quite resist the impulse to check — the old scar, not the new one. Every time he slips his fingers inside his sleeve, he expects it to be gone; sometimes, it feels like it’s perceptibly fading, others, like it’s more pronounced than ever.

Finally, around 4am, Dean sits up and pulls off his shirt, turns the light back on to stare at himself in the mirror.

It _is_ fainter than it was yesterday. Closer to pink than red.

There are places, in the prairie around Lebanon, where abandoned river courses run. Creeks and washes, imperceptible dips in the landscape, old channels and meanders splayed out on the country in worn-out scrolls of invisible ink. Go looking for them, in May or June, and you’ll never find them, but in October — when the grass is the color of Cas’s trenchcoat and the sky’s been blue from horizon to horizon for weeks on end —

That’s when the ancient rivers show their face, turn green and flourishing. The lines they trace might map the way to something hidden, if you only knew how to read them.

It might be — something like that, Dean thinks, with the handprint on his left arm.

Maybe Cas understands it. Even if he didn’t put it there on purpose. Hell, maybe Cas would have something to say about the river shit, too, though knowing him that would be as likely to veer into fluid dynamics as Enochian symbology. Cas _has_ said things a few times about the warding inherent in Lebanon’s geography, and about the bunker’s more metaphysical defenses being eroded since they moved in, something about gradients of power and reverse osmosis, which is about where Dean stopped pretending to follow. Anyway, that’s not the point.

The point is: Dean’s sick of wondering. He’s going to fucking ask.

\---

He shrugs a flannel on over his t-shirt, pulls on a pair of jeans, and pads out of his room in quiet socks. The bunker is silent, the corridors empty, and Cas isn’t in the library or the war room; isn’t in the kitchen, either. Dean rescues some questionable-looking vegetables from the sink and throws them out; the rest of the mess left by Cas’s soup has finally dissolved.

Then he heads back the way he came, down the corridor to the bedroom Cas typically claims as his own.

There’s a light on inside, golden line under the door. Dean can hear Cas humming something soft and tuneless, under his breath, that he recognizes after a moment as Zeppelin. One of the songs from that mixtape.

It’s “Trampled Underfoot.” Jesus fucking Christ.

Dean hesitates an instant longer, listening, decides that he’s being creepy, and knocks on the door.

“Come in,” says Cas, immediately, and Dean turns the knob.

Cas is sitting at his small desk, laptop open and a few Men of Letters files stacked beside it. One of them is open; there are more strewn across the bed.

“I’m trying to learn about physical ailments among angels who have lost their grace,” Cas says, conversationally, eyes still on the screen. “Nephilim would be better, of course, but there’s little enough on angels alone. There _are_ some interesting files on disease among vampires and werewolves.” He scribbles a note, torso half-pivoted toward Dean, and then sets down his pen.

Dean’s throat feels too tight to speak. He steps inside and shuts the door behind him. He can’t quite seem to let go of the knob.

“Dean,” says Cas, turning to face him. “Were you able to get any rest?”

“I, uh.” Dean’s voice scrapes awkwardly, and he winces. This abruptly feels too good for him, all of it — Cas and his research and the warm circle of his desk light, the fondness in the lines of his face. Dean wants too much from him, too much he can’t name, and he doesn’t deserve to ask it.

Cas is looking at him, though. And Dean can’t find words, so he looks at the wall past Cas’s head, and moves to take off his flannel.

Cas’s eyes widen briefly, imperceptibly. Then, as Dean pivots to shrug the sleeves off his shoulders — the left one is facing toward Cas — they widen again, and he says, in an altogether different voice, _“Oh.”_

When Dean turns to face him again, Cas is on his feet, and two steps closer. He falters. Dean balls the shirt in his hands, unsure where else to put it.

“May I?” says Cas softly, his eyes on Dean’s shoulder.

Dean nods, and looks away as Cas moves close enough to touch.

He expects it to hurt. He expects it to be like before, the dull-red seizing of muscle fibers and nerves; he expects Cas to _read_ him, to diagnose. He flinches, slightly — can’t help it — when Cas’s fingers brush the hem of his t-shirt sleeve, and Cas stops, hovering there. “Dean?”

“Go ahead,” Dean says roughly, and Cas does.

His fingertips are light for a moment longer, brushing over the lower angle of the print of his own palm. Then he pushes Dean’s sleeve up, gently, warm smooth pressure on his skin, to see the whole thing.

“When did this appear?” he asks, dropping his hand, and the absence of touch feels suddenly, irrationally, like a punch to Dean’s gut. “When I accessed your memories?”

Dean shakes his head. “Before,” he manages, in a voice that doesn’t quite crack. “I thought you might’ve — done it on purpose. When I — before I said yes.”

Cas’s hand on his shoulder. Cas’s face, wild, etched with love and need. _Come home._

It wasn’t — anything. It’s only now Dean’s realizing he thought it might be something, a tie, an invisible lead. A promise of —

Something, after. Something — else.

Cas is staring at him still. His eyes are as deep, as hard to fathom, as stars.

“I thought — you wiped me,” Dean adds, looking away again; he can’t meet that gaze for long. “When you healed me, at Stull. I mean — it hasn’t been there since.”

The space between Cas’s eyebrows furrows. “I did,” he says, “or I meant to. I —” He hesitates. Then, in a low voice, like a confession: “I didn’t want to lay a claim on you.”

It takes Dean a moment to fully understand the words.

His pulse skips, lurches, enters free-fall, starts working again. He can feel his eyes widen, his jaw drop and then clench again. He feels both distant and shockingly aware of his body — his hands, his skin.

Cas isn’t looking at him any differently. Still that worried frown, too close, and Dean’s going to — he’s going to fucking drown in Cas’s eyes. He croaks out, “And now you do?”

Cas goes very, very still.

“Dean,” he says, slowly, “I didn’t do this.”

The bottom drops out of Dean’s chest.

It wasn’t Cas. It wasn’t Cas, for all he was sure it seemed the same; for all that he knew every little divot, every line of the silhouette. It wasn’t Cas, and that means it was — means it must have been —

He feels suddenly, violently ill. He feels like he needs to run. Needs to vomit and punch a wall and curl up over the toilet, shaking and sweating; needs to find something he can use to burn his fucking _skin_ off, if that’s Michael’s mark on it. He needs it gone. He needs it _gone._ But his back is to the door, and Cas is too close, and something in Dean can’t bear to push him away.

Through the roaring in his ears, from a great distance, he hears Cas say, “Dean — did you pray to me?”

Dean blinks. The world settles, a little. “What?”

“When Michael was possessing you. Were you trying to pray?”

Drowning. Something crushing his lungs; something he can’t fight. Trying to scream, and failing; trying to — _Cas —_

He did. He prayed fucking constantly. He isn’t sure he ever stopped.

“A couple times,” he’s saying, in a shaky voice, surprising even himself; “when I knew where I was — caught a glimpse of a street sign or something, but —”

_Cas, I’m not gonna let him win. Cas, I’m coming. Cas, I’m sorry._

_Cas, I’m not strong enough. Cas, can you hear me, I am so fucking alone._

“Your name,” he says, out loud. “I — other things, too, sometimes, but mostly just — your name.”

_Castiel. Castiel. Cas._

Cas’s hand is on his shoulder again, thumb trailing briefly over the ridge of the scar. Then he splays his fingers out, palm pressing hard to Dean’s skin. He lines up finger to finger, thumb to thumb. It matches perfectly.

“Michael wouldn’t have let them through. Any of them,” says Cas. “It can have — psychosomatic effects. Untransmitted prayer. It gets trapped in the human body, and can cause damage, at the cellular level. Similar to a burn.”

Dean turns his head. There’s something shockingly real about Cas’s hand, spread over his skin like that; something that sets off a string of miniature explosions in his chest. “You’re saying I gave that to myself.”

“It makes sense,” Cas agrees, “that your body would channel the effects to the point of our most intimate contact.”

Dean chokes.

It’s a laugh, mostly. An absurd break to levity, after all _that,_ only it’s also Cas, talking about fucking — intimate contact — and Dean’s not fucking ready for it. He doesn’t have the reserves it takes to laugh it off, like usual, to turn it into a casual innuendo, a running joke.

Instead he chokes harder, and coughs, and damn near swallows his tongue. Cas drops his hand in alarm, eyes snapping up to Dean’s face.

The handprint blazes on his skin, naked, bereft. It’s like Cas’s touch filled some deep, raw gulf of need, of _want,_ and now it’s gone, and — Dean can’t cover it up. All his defenses are down, some seam within him split wide open.

He can’t keep it hidden from Cas anymore. All the things he’s been hoping, the wishes he’s been dreading to think too closely about. It just busts out of his head, and he knows it’s a prayer, too close to a prayer, and he swallows hard, and turns his chin away. He stares hard, at the wall, into the silence, and clenches his jaw, and tries to think nothing at all.

“Dean.” Cas’s hand lifts again, hesitates, hanging in the air like it’s weightless. Then it touches Dean’s cheek, briefly, and falls back to his bare shoulder. It curves around the muscle, gentle. Cas’s thumb strokes once over the raised ridge of his long-ago inner palm.

Dean shudders, almost turning to look at Cas’s face. But he’s _too close,_ and he knows everything now, as good as everything, and Dean tips his head back against the door, helpless. He’s reduced to the points of contact between Cas’s fingers and his skin — nothing more. The world narrows down to those five islands of sensation, of awareness, and then Cas says, “Dean,” again, and presses his other hand flat to Dean’s chest, directly over his heart.

“I can’t pray to you,” says Cas, “but if I could —”

All the breath leaves Dean’s body in one helpless, paralyzing gust.

“I can pray with my hands,” says Cas, and touches his face.

His thumb brushes over Dean’s cheekbone, then down to the corner of his mouth. His fingers cup the angle of Dean’s jaw, brush his earlobe, tighten ever so slightly against the pulse in his neck. His thumb ghosts — slowly, excruciatingly slowly — across the dry, tense seam of Dean’s mouth.

Dean sucks in a ragged breath. Cas’s thumb strokes back again, following the curve of his lower lip.

“Cas,” breathes Dean — his voice sounds whispered, strangled, unlike his own — “what are you —”

“I told you,” says Cas, “I’m praying,” and he leans closer — slowly, by fractions, as if he needs to determine the angle by trial and error — and tilts his head, and presses his mouth to Dean’s.

It’s a chaste kiss, a simple one. Cas’s lips are soft and a little chapped, and he doesn’t seem entirely ignorant of the mechanics of kissing, but he makes no effort to deepen it, doesn’t linger overlong. Dean’s still processing the shock of it — the way Cas feels, this close, the way his body blocks light, the tip of his nose brushing Dean’s cheek — when Cas draws away, takes a step back.

Dean’s hand falls from Cas’s hip as he moves out of reach. He hadn’t realized he’d put it there. The flannel he’s been holding, this whole time, is on the floor.

Cas is smiling, a little ruefully. His hands are at his sides. He’s still wearing his damn trenchcoat.

From a distance that’s almost clinical, it occurs to Dean that he couldn’t speak even if he knew what to say. His mind is flatlining; his body isn’t his own. Cas is watching him like he’s waiting, but Dean doesn’t know for _what._

“You’re supposed to decide whether to answer it,” Cas offers. “That’s how prayer generally works.”

Dean swallows, and discovers that there are words.

“There was — something.” It surprises him how steady his voice comes out. How like himself. “When I left with Michael.”

Cas says, “Yes.”

“I wasn’t making it up.”

“Dean,” says Cas, “we make up our lives as we live them. Isn’t that the whole point?”

It probably is. Dean moves forward — one step, two — and puts his hand around the back of Cas’s neck, and pulls him in, and kisses him.

Cas makes a noise deep in his throat, a pleased, shocked noise. He steps into Dean’s hold. His chin tilts, lips parting for Dean’s, and his tongue presses past them like he wants to taste Dean, like he wants to fuse them together. His hands are at Dean’s shoulders, his hips.

The trenchcoat, as always, is baggy, too-thick. Dean gets his hands under it. He runs both thumbs down the wings of Cas’s ribcage, warm and immediate under the thin fabric of his shirt, and it hitches as Cas draws in a sharp breath.

“Dean —” he breathes, higher-pitched, and there’s an urgency to it, a need. And Cas has done this before, yeah, but not with anyone Dean would trust in a million years to treat him right.

He dips his head to the side of Cas’s neck, and kisses the skin there. Cas tips his head back with a strangled little cry, pitches his hips forward. He’s — Jesus, he’s hard, the suit pants don’t leave much to the imagination, and Cas has never — filtered himself, the way people do. Next to all the angelic badassery he manages in a daily basis, physical desire, human needs —

“Hey,” murmurs Dean, into his skin, “I’ve got you.” He takes Cas’s hips in both hands, slow; tries to press each of his fingers down like Cas’s on his own skin. Deliberately, he lines them up, pelvis to pelvis, and pulls Cas close to feel the drag of Dean’s erection against his own. “That okay?”

Cas fucking _mewls._ His breathing stutters like there’s a bird trapped in his chest, and then he’s grabbing Dean’s skull, crushing their mouths together. _“Okay,”_ he echoes, incredulous, when he breaks free — his mouth is shining now in the light, pink and spit-slick, and Dean catches his breath staring. “Dean, if I’m taking advantage of you —”

“What the hell?” Dean almost drops his hands in shock, then pulls Cas’s hips close again instead. The bulge in his own jeans is urgent, intense. “Cas, if that feels like taking advantage —”

“You’re recovering from — weeks of — trauma,” Cas breathes, in broken little hitches. Dean kisses his jaw. “You haven’t slept — _Dean —”_

“Get me in bed, then,” Dean tells him, and slides his knee between Cas’s legs, and backs him into his own mattress.

Cas sits abruptly when the backs of his legs hit the bedframe. For a moment, Dean thinks he’s objecting again, and he should let him — he shouldn’t push Cas on this, not if he’s hesitating for any reason other than his stupid notions about Dean — but then Cas’s hands are pushing up the hem of his t-shirt, and his lips are on Dean’s stomach, collarbone rubbing over the button of Dean’s jeans. _“Fuck,”_ Dean says, and puts his hands in Cas’s hair — why does that feel so fucking good, the curve of Cas’s ear under his thumb, hair tickling smooth between his fingers — and Cas mouths at his hipbone, runs both hands up Dean’s thighs and reaches to fumble with his fly.

“Jesus,” says Dean, “ _Cas,_ ” and it’s an awkward angle, but he has to — has to kiss him, tip Cas’s head back and sink into a weird sort of half-bow-half-crouch, and he’s just about to go to his knees on the floor, which has — yeah, possibilities — when Cas makes a noise of protest in his throat, and grabs Dean’s hips, and twists him onto the bed.

He lands hard on his ass, with a little _ooph_ and a loud crumpling of Men of Letters files beneath his shoulders. Then Cas is on top of him, and pulling the files free to cast on the floor in a fluttering of paper, and Cas is bending over him and tilting Dean’s chin up with two fingers and kissing him soundly, snaking his other hand right down into Dean’s half-undone jeans — Jesus, _Jesus_ — and wrapping his fingers like they mean it around Dean’s cock.

Dean makes a sound like he’s dying and arches off the bed.

“Sh,” Cas is shushing him between kisses, light now, and rapid, “shh, just let me,” but Dean can’t, he won’t, he’s pulling Cas’s shirt tails free of his pants, shoving in vain at the trenchcoat at his shoulders. Cas is stronger than he looks; letting Dean get the coat off would mean moving his hands, so he simply doesn’t, and after a moment Dean gives up. He goes for the collar of Cas’s shirt, instead, pulls free the fucking tie, gets most of the buttons undone properly before ripping the last one in his haste. Then there’s Cas’s skin, yawning expansive above him, glorious, and that distracts Dean’s hands for long moments, his eyes.

Cas is trying to kiss him, still, but Dean ignores him for a moment, lifting his head so he can see the slight softness to Cas’s belly, the trail of hair that disappears into his pants. His fingers dance toward it. Cas’s hand stills, tightening slightly in frustration, and his other thumb presses against Dean’s lips. _“Dean.”_

“Let’s get you out of these,” Dean murmurs, too fixated on getting Cas naked to care that his sitting half-up has pinned Cas’s hand, immobile, inside his jeans. “Here, let me —”

“Only if you,” Cas counters, and that’s how they’re somehow both shimmying free of their clothes, a confused congress of hands on buttons, fabric pulled down over thighs. Dean toes his own socks off, because he’s got some degree of class, but if he meant to care that Cas apparently doesn’t, that goes the way of his brain when Cas wraps his hand again around Dean’s cock, strokes down to the root, and fastens his teeth lightly on Dean’s left nipple.

Dean yells something that doesn’t have syllables, arching off the bed. But that helps his hand find Cas’s cock — gloriously exposed now, and Jesus, there’s a lot of it — and Cas bites down hard on his collarbone, trails punishing kisses over Dean’s neck.

It takes them a moment to stop warring with each other. To sink into a rhythm, hands working in concert, skin brushing skin. Dean writhing on his back in the bed, spasming upward, seeking Cas’s warmth like the sun; Cas shaking with hunger above him, mouth moving ceaselessly, hands devouring Dean’s skin.

When they come, it’s within a heartbeat of each other — Cas silent and intent and gasping, Dean with a shuddering cry. Their come mingles in streaks, smearing across both their skin.

Cas lets out one more long breath and drops heavily onto Dean’s chest, burying his face in his neck. It’s funny, Dean thinks distantly, that this weight doesn’t bother him; that he knows he can breathe just fine.

Still. After a minute, Cas starts to feel heavy. Dean’s legs are sticking off the end of the bed. And his feet are getting cold.

“Cas,” he says. He pokes Cas’s bicep with one finger, a little entranced by the golden curve of it. “Off.”

Cas draws back immediately. His eyes are wide and blue, staring down, and Dean loves him more than should be reasonably allowed. “I’m sorry,” he says, immediately, “I’ll —”

“Don’t be stupid,” says Dean, shifting his hips to free the covers from beneath them. “Get in bed with me.” A thought occurs to him. “I mean — if you don’t mind me staying.”

An odd, tender expression crosses Cas’s face; it makes him look a little like a rumpled frog. Dean _loves_ him, fuck. “I don’t mind you staying,” Cas echoes, and laces the fingers of his right hand with Dean’s left. He drops a sudden, searing kiss onto Dean’s mouth, pulls back. “Stay.”

The glow in Cas’s eyes is almost too much to look at. He’s staring down at Dean like he feels just as stupid-sappy about this whole thing as Dean does. Dean swallows.

“Get under the covers then,” he grumbles, “Jesus,” and Cas laughs, high and happy and surprised, head tipping back, throat gleaming with it, and obeys.

 

### VI.

Dean sleeps for thirteen hours.

He wakes up long enough to find his clothes and stumble into the kitchen to scrounge up some food. A lot of the soup is gone, but there’s still enough left over for a good meal. He can hear people moving around in the war room, but when he pokes his head around the corner, none of his family is among them, so he retreats to the kitchen to finish eating. He’s not sure where Cas got to.

He’s in the middle of washing up when there’s a sound of throat-clearing behind him, and he turns to see Sam, eyebrows drawn together in concern. “You, uh,” he says, “you weren’t in your room,” and Dean realizes abruptly that he’s probably got hickeys down his neck and isn’t sure whether any of them are visible, and feels his eyes widen in alarm.

Sam takes a step forward. “Dean, if you need to talk —”

Dean steps back sharply. His cheeks are flaming. He hasn’t showered since — all that. If Sam got too close he could probably smell it on him. “I’m, I’m good,” he says, quickly. “Promise, Sammy. Just, uh — I’m good.”

“Dean —” says Sam, again, but Dean maneuvers past him before Sam can reach out to make him stop.

He hesitates in the doorway, turning back. “Hey — where’s Cas?”

Sam’s eyebrows, if possible, draw further together. “Supply run to Hastings. Why?”

“No reason,” Dean tells him, and flees.

\---

He starts toward his own room. Halfway there, he stops, shrugs, and changes course for Cas’s.

He sleeps another twelve hours.

Somewhere in the middle, he feels a weight settle into the bed beside him, an arm wrap around his torso. He sighs, turns over, and nuzzles into the warm, familiar scent of Cas’s neck.

\---

The next morning, Dean drags himself down the hall for a proper shower. He retrieves his dead guy robe, and fresh clothes; someone, at some point, has removed the Michael ones from his floor.

Dean wonders if Cas would ever — maybe — want to move into his room.

He studies himself in the mirror. His eyes look less weary. The spear mark on his right shoulder looks the same as ever; the handprint on his left is faded, pale pink, nearly gone.

He’ll miss it, sort of. He doesn’t mind the reason it’s disappearing. At the moment, Cas has left plenty more marks on his skin.

When he walks into the kitchen, freshly clean, Cas and Sam are both on their laptops at the table. There’s a coffee pot steaming at Sam’s elbow. It’s maybe not a good sign, Dean thinks, that in his absence Sam has decided the counter is too far to walk for a fresh cup of coffee.

He doesn’t realize until he’s halfway through pouring himself a bowl full of cereal that Sam is watching him, and grinning like he just painted superglue all over a beer bottle.

Dean sets the milk down sharply. His hand isn’t permanently attached to it. “What?”

Sam’s grin, if possible, widens. “You, uh. You weren’t in your room,” he says, again, the corners of his mouth twitching like it’s all he can do to hold in laughter.

Across the kitchen table from him, Cas rolls his eyes to the ceiling.

Dean redirects his scowl. He can feel his cheeks flaming. “You _told_ him?”

Cas’s eyes perform several centuries worth of suffering as they move to land on Dean. “He was worrying about you,” he says.

“That,” agrees Sam, practically bursting with glee, “and Cas has a _terrible_ poker face.” He cackles at Dean’s mortification. “Don’t be like that. I’m rooting for you guys.”

“Hey,” starts Dean, “just because —”

He’s cut off by a sudden cough from the doorway. It’s Jack, looking red-nosed and bleary, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. “Rooting for them to do what?”

It would be nice, Dean thinks, if the Earth would open up beneath him. Just — kindly swallow him whole.

“To, uh,” Cas clears his throat, eyes wide with alarm. “To — find a new case for us.” He gestures at his laptop screen. “See, there’s this possible haunting outside Ponca City —”

Jack shuffles closer, leaning in to look. Cas is scrolling quickly, talking in that slightly overwhelmed, serious-Dad voice he gets whenever Jack is around; across the table, Sam is doing his best to stuff his grin back inside the corners of his cheeks.

They’re fucking ridiculous, the lot of them. They’re the reason Dean let an archangel ride around in his skin; they’re the reason he picked a battle he always knew he might lose.

It isn’t over yet, probably. Cas taps at something on the computer screen, smudging it.

Dean shakes his head, snags Sam's coffee, and joins his family at the table.

**Author's Note:**

> ETA: I went and did the [tumblr thing](https://gravelghosts.tumblr.com/post/180244058744/spn-fic-a-river-leads-you-home-1403-coda-10k), if you want to reblog.
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


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